We’ll just schedule our days! We’ll make a plan! We just need to pray more!

Sound familiar? Perhaps we have heard those words in our own hearts and heads!

The best Divine Office seems to evolve when we decide not how we can pencil God in, but when we decide that we must have more of God than what we already have!

When we evaluate the worth of God, when we determine His value in our own estimation, we make progress. When we think of it, everything else of worth pales in comparison. For all that He has given and instituted in our lives, we return to Him gratitude and love and adoration.

Still, we have to get there . . . to the place, the time, the occasion where we will close ourselves in with Him. We go to the place where He awaits us. Jesus said that place is real and that the Father is really there, waiting for us in secret, seeking worshipers. The path that leads us into the Presence of God is often the one that follows the marked path … “No More Talk Shows – THIS WAY” or “NEW PRIORITIES … NEXT EXIT”. Certainly it is the road less traveled, especially for those who will come again and again during the day, when more delights and distractions fill the landscape.

It is ever the WORTH and the FRIENDSHIP and the GLORY and the LOVE of God that prompt us, here in Cor Unum. He Himself, His incomparable value, reforms us when nothing else will. How grievous it will be to discover all that we could have had of God if we would have been content with less refuse in our lives. God help us to make that discovery now, that we may live and die, unashamed.

Having found one of great price, the merchant, who was seeking a valuable pearl, sold all that he had in order to buy it. (Matthew 13:45, 46) The part of the parable that we often overlook is in the first verse … he was looking for treasure in the first place!

The Empress Maria Feodorovna

by Ivan Kramakov, public domain